


Amnesty To The Max!

by Madame de flammes (owlaholic68)



Category: Lumberjanes, The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Canon Trans Character, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Gen, Monsters, Mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-09-28 04:04:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17175524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/Madame%20de%20flammes
Summary: The hardcore lady-types from the Lumberjanes camp are no stranger to cryptids and supernatural mysteries. When they team up with the Pine Guard, they’re practically unstoppable on their quest to take care of an abomination…or are they?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note: You do not have to have knowledge of the Lumberjanes comic series or of TAZ: Amnesty! (Though I would of course heartily recommend both!)

Like most things with the Lumberjanes, it all starts with the Bearwoman.

Well, technically, it starts with a noise first.

“What was that?” Molly turns her head at the sound. Her long blond braid flops over her shoulder. At the movement, the coonskin cap on her head shivers and raises its head, revealing it to be an actual live raccoon. Bubbles yawns, woken by his nap. “I thought I heard something.”

“A squirrel?” Jo offers. The two girls are walking along the path back from the Yetis' treehouse. After a strange incident involving the kitchen becoming sentient and refusing to turn off its ovens, the Lumberjanes camp had a surplus of perishable baked goods. The two had volunteered to bring some to their friends.

“I guess.” Molly shrugs. “It just seems like everything is a cryptid or a monster these days. When’s the last time we saw some normal wildlife?”

“That’s true.” Jo runs a hand through her shoulder-length shaggy brown hair. “Remember that time that the Fox talked all of the animals into pranking us-”

She stops in the middle of the path. “I heard that this time too. It didn’t sound like an animal, it sounded like somebody’s voice.”

Molly shivers and moves closer to Jo, turning to keep an eye on their back. On top of her head, Bubbles the racoon peers at the forest.

From the bushes surrounding them, a low growl starts.

 _“That_ sounds like an animal,” Molly whispers. “Let’s try and get off the path and hide.”

“Good idea,” Jo quietly responds, leading them into the forest. Molly watches their back, but she doesn’t see anything follow. The growling fades away as they enter an empty clearing.

“I think we lost it – AH!-” Molly yells and Jo can no longer feel her presence against her back.

Jo whirls, fists raised. Though what good she could do against a monster, she doesn’t know. But it’s the spirit of the thing. “Molly! Are you okay?”

Not a supernatural monster. Just a wolf. A lone one, but big. Its paws are pinning Molly’s shoulders to the ground. It snaps in Molly’s face, snarling against her hands that hold it at bay. It raises its head and glares in Jo’s direction with sharp gray eyes.

Jo freezes in fear and shock. It’s like her legs have turned to ice. She can’t move, she can’t breathe, she can’t do anything to help Molly-

A shape barrels out of the brush and sweeps the wolf to one side with a swipe of its massive paw. It’s a bear twice the girls’ size, fur ragged and graying. It roars once at the wolf, which quickly scurries away. The bear turns to face them. Then, with a magical whoosh of light, it’s no longer a bear.

“What have you girls gotten yourselves into this time?” The Bearwoman, aka Nellie, aka former camp leader, says. An older woman a head and a half shorter than Molly and Jo, the Bearwoman is all patched practical clothing and gruffness. “How’d you get a wolf to attack you in broad daylight?”

“Thanks for saving us, Nellie,” Molly says, taking the lead in this conversation. She’s the one with the most experience in dealing with the Bearwoman anyway. “We don’t know what happened, it just jumped at us.”

“Hm.” Nellie sniffs the air, screwing up her face in concentration. “Perhaps not a wolf at all, then…” She turns and sees the empty clearing they’re standing in. She raises her spectacles to her face. “A-ha!” Her wrinkled face contorts into a smug look of understanding. “No, this is something far more dangerous. I wonder…” She looks back at them.

“Wonder what?” Jo hazards. “What’s going on?”

“I wonder…what do you two see in this clearing?”

Molly looks at Jo. She shrugs. “Nothing? It’s just an empty clearing.” She perks up. “Wait, you were using your spectacles! Does that mean that there’s a portal here? Does this have something to do with the dinosaur world? The Place of Lost Things?”

“A good guess, but not quite.” Nellie squints. “You got the portal part right, at least.”

And just like that, they see it. Two slabs of stone with a third perched on top. Despite looking like your average Stonehedge gate, there’s something off about it. The girls almost swear that it’s faintly glowing.

“A portal?” Jo stares at it with wide eyes. “If it’s not to the dinosaur world, then where to?”

Nellie grins wide. “To somewhere else entirely.”

* * *

Like many things for the Pine Guard, it all starts with a phone call.

Aubrey looks up from the five cards in her hand. Diagonally across from her, Dani frowns too and looks around. They look at Jake Coolice and Agent Stern, their two partners in this game of euchre (one invited to play, the other one very much not).

Across the room, Duck makes eye contact with Aubrey and raises his eyebrows in a silent question. Very few people call Amnesty Lodge. After a moment, he shrugs and answers the phone.

“Hello, you’ve reached Amnesty Lodge. This is Duck.” Maybe it’s someone calling him on Forest business, or someone inquiring about the Lodge’s accommodations.

“Ah, Duck!” Indrid Cold somehow manages to pretend to sound surprised, even though he surely knows who would be answering the phone. “How are things at the Lodge?”

“Uh, good?” Duck toys with the phone cord. He keeps his voice down. “What’s up, man? Somebody in urgent need of being saved?”

“No, thankfully not.” On the other end, Indrid heaves a sigh. “Quite frankly, Duck, I’ve got quite a baffling future that keeps cropping up. A few different ways it can happen, of course, but there is one thing that is relatively constant.”

“And that is?” Duck prompts when it seems as if their moth friend isn’t going to continue.

Indrid sounds like he’s grinning on the other end. “Interesting futures. Tell me, Ranger Newton, when is the next abomination due?”

“Uh, it was due last week,” Duck admits. “But it never showed up. We’ve been kinda worried that we weren’t observant enough.”

“Well, it just turns out that this abomination slipped through a different portal than your own. A cosmic anomaly. Like your world and Sylvain are linked, there are a few other pairs of parallel worlds linked in the much the same way, with various portals and such connecting them. This abomination just hopped through the wrong portal. But never fear, the universe has corrected the error and it should be coming through…soon.”

“Okay, cool, thanks for the heads-up.” Duck briefly meets Aubrey’s eyes and nods to let her know it’s about Pine Guard business. “We’ll start getting ready.”

“That’s not all,” Indrid blurts in a rush, his voice starting to get the distant quality that means he’s flipping through hundreds of different futures at once. “More than that is going to come through the gate. Tell Mama that the Lodge needs to prep for guests.”

“Guests? You mean Sylphs? There are more coming through the gate?”

“Uhhhhhhh…” Indrid pauses. “Not quite. Yes and no. There’ll be six of them, but they can all share a room if given sleeping bags. Just be ready!”

And then, before Duck can ask for literally _any_ more clarification, Indrid hangs up. Typical.

* * *

“I can’t believe I’m even saying this.” Jen crosses her arms and raises her eyes to the ceiling. “But I’m going with you. Whatever this weird world is, you shouldn’t all be going alone. Besides, it’ll stop me from worrying.”

“Aw, Jen, you don’t have to worry about us! We can take care of ourselves just fine!” Ripley, the youngest member of the cabin, latches onto Jen’s waist and gives her the biggest puppy-dog eyes a human being could muster.

“Still.” Jen holds firm. “I’m going anyway. I’m already packed, see?”

She points to the door, where her backpack sits. April is leaning against it putting her shoes on, her long ginger hair held back by a polka dot scarf.

“Sure, I guess,” Jo says. “The Bearwoman didn’t say that Jen couldn’t come. Only that we need to all hold onto this scarf, just in case we come through the non-human side. That’s all the explanation she would give us.”

“That and you said that she said that weird portal is going to disappear tonight if we don’t go through it,” Mal points out. She makes sure her undercut hair is combed over before putting on her own shoes. Mal looks over at Molly. “Did she say that the weird wolf-monster you ran into came through this portal?”

“Yeah.” Molly explains the rest on the way to the portal. Night is falling and the group has to get out their flashlights to make their way through the woods. “The Bearwoman’s not quite sure, but she says these gates have popped up once or twice before, and the people on the other sides are tasked with fighting these monsters.”

Jen shines her flashlight into the brush. She could have sworn she saw something move. “The other _sides?_ You mean there’s more than one place this gate goes to?”

“That’s right.” April, who had been taking notes when Molly and Jo had explained the first time, pulls open her notebook and starts to explain. “It’s technically not supposed to go to our world at all. So, there’s these two worlds, Sylvain and another version of Earth, and they’re linked…”

* * *

The sun is dripping down below the treeline when the Pine Guard get to the gate in the woods.

“We should have just taken the SnowCat,” Ned grumbles. “Would have been faster.”

“It’s the middle of April,” Barclay points out. “There’s no snow. Besides, it’s not the best thing if there are giant vehicle tracks leading right up to the secret gate to another dimension, Ned. That’s not the most subtle.”

“Maybe I can be subtle sometimes.” Ned crosses his arms and frowns into the forest. “Duck, why’re we out here tonight anyways? I thought we all agreed that we’d just skipped an abomination month. And now you’re insisting that it’s coming through tonight?”

“Well-”

“Indrid called,” Aubrey interrupts whatever terrible unnecessary lie Duck was about to tell. “He said-”

Aubrey’s head jerks up towards the clearing ahead. “Did you see-”

“That looked like the gate activating!” Duck tightens his grip on his flashlight and rushes forward. Aubrey, Ned, and Barclay hurry to follow (Ned not enthusiastically, but he also doesn’t want to get left alone in the creepy forest). Aubrey stops short as they rush into a clearing and see-

* * *

“I don’t want to freak anyone out, but…” Mal grabs onto Molly’s arm. “Did anyone hear something? Something following us, maybe?”

“It’s probably just a bat,” Jen replies, staring determinedly ahead. “There are a lot of different bats this time of year. Is this the clearing? I don’t see anything.”

“Are you sure?” Mal glances over her shoulder as something rustles. “Because even if it is a bat, well, what if it’s a hammer-headed bat? Or Griffin’s leaf-nosed bat? What if it’s actually a pterodactyl and it’s going to swoop down and eat us-”

“Mal.” Molly grabs Mal’s hand. “Everything’s fine. We’ve been through these woods a million times and never gotten attacked by pterodactyls. Besides, the hammer-headed bat only lives in Africa. We’re fine-”

A crash from the woods behind them would suggest otherwise. Mal squeaks. April pushes up her sleeves, fists raised in front of her. Ripley crouches, poised to strike if something should go wrong.

What comes out of the woods is not quite an animal. Part ooze, part slimy scales. A gaping maw in the vague shape of a bear. Jagged red eyes. Large leathery bat wings.

“What the-”

“Guys.” Jen’s voice is quiet and calm. She takes the end of the long shimmering scarf the Bearwoman had given Molly, then passes the long end to Ripley. “Everyone grab onto this and back away. Slowly. Into the gate.”

Ripley passes the scarf along, glancing over her shoulder. “The gate’s not glowing or anything,” she remarks. “How do we know that we’re going to go through?”

“The Bearwoman said that the moon would activate it.” Jo passes the scarf to April. Her legs have frozen up again, but she manages to step backwards with the others, trying to shake the stiff paralysis. “When will the moon be up, Jen?”

“Any minute now. Late-summer full moons come early. Just keep walking backward. Everybody stay calm.”

April stays in the front of the group, ready to grapple or fight this disastrous mangled mess of nature if need be. Mal and Molly are clutching each other. The monster’s mouth hangs open, black sludge congealing in large goops between its sleek teeth.

A flash, a scuff of wind, and the clouds part to reveal a steadily bright moon. The entire scene, the monster, the swaying blades of grass, April standing strong, are backlit by a brilliant light.

“Now, now-”

“Come on-”

Ripley first, then Mal and Molly. Jo on their heels, dragging April along behind her. Jen ushers them through then, with one last glance at the abomination, rushes through herself.

They find themselves in a white space, a familiar in-between feeling to those among this brave group who had travelled through portals like this before.

And then they walk out the other side and they see-


	2. Chapter 2

Ripley is weightless. Surrounded by bright light, floating in a falling-ish sort of way. Kind of like that one time she semi-accidentally became an all-powerful goddess for two minutes, but without all the lightning and glowing eyes.

“Whoa!” Mal, falling next to Ripley, almost lets go of the long shimmering scarf that’s keeping all of them tethered together as they go through this portal. Rings of light surround them as they’re falling-

“This is kind of like the other portals!” Ripley remarks, getting affirmative nods from both Mal and Molly. Falling, slowing down… “I wonder-”

They land. Ripley steps out onto solid ground, tamped-down earth. There are tall stone pillars making a small structure. And behind the structure Ripley can see a city. A wonderful magical city. She gasps and almost lets go of the scarf, saved only by Mal quickly grabbing her wrist.

From the entrance of this pavilion, two people turn. No, two _nonhuman_ people. Ripley gasps and hears her surprise echoed in her friends behind her.

“A vampire!” April squeals, the telltale sound of her notebook slipping out of her bag following her words. Ripley looks back to see April wind the scarf around her wrist before she starts furiously writing.

“And a…squirrel person?” Jo rubs her chin. “I’m not sure that’s a scientifically plausible idea-”

“Halt, Earthlings!” The squirrel person booms. They raise a spear. “Explain yourselves at once or face your doom!”

“Uh…” Ripley looks over her shoulder at Jen. “We, uh…”

Jen takes the hint and steps forward, holding onto the end of the scarf. “We mean no harm.”

The vampire-looking guard narrows his glowing orange eyes. “That scarf. It is made of Sylvan wool. You six…” He eyes them over. “You are not Pine Guard. Explain yourselves. How did you get that scarf? Where did you come from? How did you come here?”

“This scarf?” Jen frowns. “The Bearwoman gave it to us. I take it that it’s special or something?”

“Yes.” The squirrel guard takes a menacing step forward. “If you let go of it, we will be forced to immediately subdue you, for our own safety, after the curse on this world renders you feral and uncontrollably violent.”

Ripley swallows hard and tightens her grip on the scarf. Oh.

“As for where we come from-” Jen stops. Her eyes widen as another figure steps into the pavilion.

“What is going on here?” A tall goat man demands, looking like Jen after the campers sneak out one too many times. He eyes their group with clear frustration in his strange goat eyes. “Who are you? What is the meaning of this?”

Jen has reached the limit of what she can mentally handle in one night. She just stares at the goat man.

“Uh, we-” Molly tries, but falters as the figure’s stare turns towards her.

“We’re the Lumberjanes!” Ripley exclaims in the awkward silence. “You’re a goat man!”

He impassively stares back. “Yes. I am. My name is Vincent. I am this world’s Minister of Defense.” Vincent sighs and rubs his forehead. “This is a most unfortunate situation. Humans are not supposed to know about this world. You are not of the Pine Guard, as I can see. How did you find this place? Do you know a human called Mama?”

“We came through a gate in the forest,” Jo offers when no one else responds. “The Bearwoman showed it to us and gave us this scarf. Um, as for Mama,” she looks at the others. “We don’t know a Mama.”

“I know _my_ mama,” Mal says. “But no, we just kinda stepped through. Was that bad? Are we going to die now?”

“No, you’re not going to die now.” Vincent sighs more heavily. “A Bear Woman, hm… I seem to recall some sort of shapeshifting bear-like woman coming through ages ago. She was rather grumpy.”

“That’s her, then,” Molly mutters, sharing a glance with Mal.

Jen shakes her head back and forth and finds her voice again. “So what now?”

“Now.” Vincent’s stare turns stern. “Now the six of you seem nice and all, but you must turn around and walk right back through that gate. And then you will never breathe a word of this place to anyone, and you will never come back. Have I made myself clear?”

Ripley looks up at Jen, then back at her cabinmates. Forget about a magical place like this? There’s a castle over in the distance. A cool crystal. Ripley itches to explore this place, to look at all the fantastic people. More animal people can be seen in the city beyond this pavilion. More vampire-looking people too, and some…ghosts? Ripley wants to explore it all. But Vincent seems not just grumpy and stern, but also a little scared. He really doesn’t want them to tell anyone. He wants them to leave. He’s just trying to protect his people.

Mal seems more than happy to do what the freaky goat man asks. Molly is quietly curious but knows authority when she sees it. April is still furiously writing and sketching, bursting with questions. Jo keeps looking around at the architecture and the strange people. Jen seems undecided, her own curiosity warring against the need to keep her campers safe.

“We agree.” Ripley finds herself surprised to be saying the words aloud. “We won’t tell anyone and we won’t come back.” She looks at each of the others in turn. Each person nods. “We promise.”

“Thank you.” Vincent’s shoulders relax. “Now you’d best go on through, before we lose moonlight.”

“Bye, Mr. Goatman!” Ripley waves with her free hand. This time they go in reverse order, Jen first, Ripley last. Before Ripley steps through the gate after her friends, she looks back at the mystical world, at the castle and the people. One day, she wants to promise herself, but she already promised Vincent. One day she could come back, but she can’t. She’s never going to. A promise means everything, and Ripley’s not in the habit of breaking promises.

She waves again to Vincent, then walks through the gate without another backwards glance.

* * *

Duck bursts into the clearing and sees the gate filled with unearthly light. He draws Beacon and braces himself for the abomination that is coming through. But what exits the gate instead is-

“What?” Duck lowers his sword. A group of five kids and a woman who looks like she _could_ be in high school. The older teenager is wearing a summer camp uniform and toting a well-stocked backpack. The others are in various practical outfits. All six people are holding onto a long shimmering scarf. Shimmering like it’s made of Sylvan wool-

“Uh oh,” Barclay mutters, obviously seeing the same thing as Duck. “Did they go to Sylvain?”

“How did they see the Gate?” Ned quietly asks.

“Hi!” One of the girls yells when she sees them, one of the shortest ones. “Hi, what are you doing here in our-” She falters and looks around at her companions. “In, um, our forest?”

“Uh oh,” Aubrey echoes Barclay before turning her voice up to speak to the rest of the group. “Hi there! Um, who are you and what are you doing in _our_ forest? Are you lost?”

They all look at each other, then back at the Pine Guard. “Um, we just went through the gate on our end,” the oldest woman offers. “And then we – we were told to go back through, so we did, and apparently we did not go back through to our own forest.”

“Our forest is deciduous,” one of the other girls mutters. “And it is supposed to be mid-summer, not early spring.”

“No!” A girl who Aubrey really likes the aesthetic of starts wailing. “We’re lost! We’re never going to get back now and everybody from the camp is going to think we disappeared and died, again, and Rosie’s going to have to call the coast guard and the police and also my mom and tell her I got lost in the woods-”

“Now, now, we’re going to go ahead and sort this all out,” Duck says in an unsure way, because Aubrey knows for a fact that Duck has _no idea_ what is going on or how to fix it. “We’ll get you folks settled in at the Lodge for now, we’ve already got a room done up too, then we’ll figure out how to send y’all back home. Don’t worry a bit about it.”

Because their lives cannot cease to have ironic timing, the abomination takes this moment to attack.

**Author's Note:**

> Two fandoms that both love and appreciate cryptids and "monsters"? Two groups of people who are tasked with protecting their own little corner of the world? Heck yeah, sign me up!
> 
> Canon-compliant as of Episode 19 of Amnesty (though I have no idea how to reconcile all of the stuff that just happened in that episode, holy crap) and Issue 56 of Lumberjanes (the end of the Tromatikos arc).
> 
> BTW the "canon lesbian relationship" tag refers to Mal/Molly, I just didn't feel like clogging up the tags with even more than I already have! Aubrey/Dani might be in here somewhere too, idk, I have the whole fic as Gen right now.


End file.
